News Round Up: Garalon LFR Hotfixes, Battle.net World Championships

Today's news round up covers LFR fixes to Garalon, World of Warcraft Monopoly, and information on the upcoming Battle.net World Championships! The Challenge Mode competition was a highlight at MoP's launch party, and you can catch more of that at 7:30 p.m. PDT this Friday, as players from Asia's top raid teams race though Shado-Pan Monastery, Scarlet Halls, and Stormstout Brewery.

Crithto

We’ve recently hotfixed the Raid Finder version of Garalon, reducing both his health and Furious Swipe damage. In addition, and also exclusive to the Raid Finder version of this encounter, Garalon's Crush ability now has a cooldown, and we’ve corrected an issue with his aggro radius to prevent players from drawing aggro until a player has entered a ring.

With regard to all raid difficulties, after further testing the encounter, we realized that certain abilities were having unintended effects. Blade Flurry, Inferno Blast and Sweeping Strikes were doing double damage to Garalon's body while attacking his legs, which was not intended. We are currently implementing a hotfix, which should take effect after realms are restarted, that will cause these abilities to do normal damage to the body while continuing to do double damage to the legs.​The real question is, is this a change to underlying bf mechanics or just a special case change to garalon.

Sort of, and something we should take this opportunity to clarify. In Cataclysm, cleave-type mechanics double-dipped on damage bonuses, but we changed that universally in Patch 5.0 on a fundamental level. If you go back to Halfus Wyrmbreaker or Wind Lord Mel'jarak, you'll find that cleave effects that derive their damage from the initial hit now only award the bonus damage on the target that is receiving increased damage.

Note that this works both ways. If you Sinister Strike a target that has a 50% damage reduction effect on it, your Blade Flurry will still do full damage to a secondary target, which previously would not have been the case.

The pending hotfix addresses a bug specific to the Garalon encounter which cause these new rules to not apply. Abilities that can hit a leg and the body simultaneously will still be extremely effective on the boss.

You realize that without stacking, a 6min enrage was really tough to meet--for a normal mode, right?

Garalon's berserk timer on Normal and Heroic modes was adjusted from 6 minutes to 7 minutes last week. So far, we've seen many Heroic kills (10H and 25H) where a balanced raid composition was utilized, many of which were well ahead of the increased berserk timer.

Click the cut to read about the Battle.net World Championships: Challenge Event Dungeons and World of Warcraft Monopoly!

Battle.net World Championships: Challenge Event Dungeons

Blizzard

Be sure to tune in on Friday, November 16 at 5:30 p.m. PDT for Day One of the Battle.net World Championship to watch the Opening Ceremonies. Then, at 7:30 p.m. PDT, witness five-player teams from each of Asia’s top raiding guilds, Stars and Supreme Quicksand, prove their mettle by competing simultaneously in the Dungeon Challenge, a Challenge Mode race through Shado-pan Monastery, Scarlet Halls, and Stormstout Brewery. Each team must use only a single party composition throughout the competition, and only the most skilled players will turn in the fastest time to emerge victorious.

Let’s briefly take a look at each of these dungeons to see what the competitors are in for.

Shado-pan Monastery

War has spread across Pandaria, and the destructive conflict between the Horde and Alliance has led to turmoil in the majestic Shado-pan Monastery. There, three malevolent entities--the Sha of Violence, the Sha of Hatred, and the Sha of Anger--have erupted from their prisons. Although the Sha of Anger fled the secluded monastery completely, the remaining sha have begun wreaking havoc on the site's brave Shado-pan defenders.

Shado-pan Monastery could very well be the most difficult dungeon in the Challenge. It is the longest of the Challenge Mode dungeons in this group by a wide margin, and offers the least leeway in terms of tricks to get through faster. To succeed each team will have to display the utmost in coordination, extreme skill, and impeccable execution.

Scarlet Halls

The Crusade's fiercest warriors, those who have held their ground and fought to defend the monastery throughout these dark times, are rapidly preparing an army within the Scarlet Halls. These soldiers are bound by their hatred of the unliving, and they are willing to sacrifice everything for their order's righteous cause.

Scarlet Halls isn’t as grueling as Shado-pan Monastery, but it offers different opportunities and challenges. Look for tense moments in the opening stretch where competitors can make use of good timing to evade patrols and throw buckets of meat to distract guard dogs to forge a path to the first boss while only fighting a bare minimum of enemies. Scarlet Halls' most fearsome section is the Armory area right before Armsmaster Harlan. The Armory is criss-crossed by large patrolling groups of enemies reminiscent of Shattered Halls from The Burning Crusade.

Stormstout Brewery

When Chen Stormstout arrived in the Valley of the Four Winds, he journeyed to the renowned brewery of his namesake, hoping to connect with his relatives. What he found was his ancestral home in disarray. Under the watch of the incompetent Uncle Gao, loathsome virmen and unruly hozen have infiltrated the brewery, sparking a destructive revel that will soon devastate the region's supply of tasty beer.

Stormstout Brewery is packed wall to wall with fun and funny foes, but in Challenge Mode the humor takes a dark turn, for they all represent a deadly threat. Still, there are places where clever teams can shave precious time from their attempt, both the Hoptallus gauntlet and Ook Ook's party room offer clever players an opportunity to save massive amounts of time.

Previous Dungeon Challenges
This race wasn’t simultaneous, but you can check out these videos from the Challenge Mode race at the North American Mists of Pandaria launch event in for a taste of what is to come, including an introduction discussing what Challenge Modes are all about featuring Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas:

You can catch the live stream of the Battle.net World Championship Dungeon Challenge on the Battle.net World Championship site, and don’t forget to stick around to watch Arena battles featuring the best teams in the world.

Have you attempted these Challenge Mode dungeons? What would you warn others to watch out for?

World of Warcraft Monopoly

Blizzard

The time has finally come to bring the fun home to your family because the highly anticipated World of Warcraft Monopoly Collector’s Edition is now available at GAME and base.com for £29.99.

Descend into a realm of myth, magic, and legendary adventure with the World of Warcraft Collector's Edition of Monopoly. Buy the ominous Twilight Highlands and feel the presence of the Old Gods in the air. Trade for Scourge-infested Icecrown to gain complete control of the coveted Northrend zones. And for the ultimate power play, seize the mighty faction capitals: Orgrimmar and Stormwind. When you own it all and reign supreme over your opponents, victory will be yours.

Comments

Comment by link55557

on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:02:45 -0600

Must.... resist.... urge to buy... a WoW version... of a boardgame I hate...

Not... resisting... well...

Comment by stym

on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:41:17 -0600

I tried the Dread Approach LFR segment this week, and even though I kept thinking "people will eventually learn this encounter and get it, it really needs no nerf", the following considerations came to mind:1- Queuing for LFR and finding 2/6 raids over and over and over again , and realizing those IDs have been running there for hours and wiping several times on Garalon is depressing.2- Having five people leave at the first fail and having to explain encounter mechanism to the newcomers over again, only to have people leave during the explanation is kind of aggravating.

In short, the nerf will look kind of silly in a month or two when everyone gets it, but right now it is needed for a group of 25 complete strangers, some of whom being unwilling to check wowhead or youtube for basic encounter strategy.I call that segment the Dread Roach.

Comment by BosephHeyden

on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:50:39 -0600

The sad part is that, with the gear requirements for Dread Approach, you would think that, at the very least, people running it would have DBM installed. 90% of the people able to do these LFR's should have at least minimal raid experience in MoP, so why this is hard is beyond me. Now that it's been nerfed, I still don't expect it to solve everything.

Comment by Khayos

on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:44:55 -0600

For the monopoly game:

Custom Money:1: Chen (from the new Pandaren race)

I think the Chen should be a 10. Easier to remember.

Comment by Elladaryn

on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:22:38 -0600

Custom Money:500: Thrall (Orc)

WAHT? ORDE FAVORRITISM!

Comment by Rainemard

on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:40:03 -0600

Dungeon Journal is such a useless tool.

Either you're the type that's always looked up encounters beforehand via Tankspot/YT/etc., making the Journal redundant, or you're the type that relies on others to explain each encounter, and you don't look at the Journal anyway.

Can I have my key ring back? Those 3-4 bank slots I had to put keys in are looking mighty nice with all these fluff items i'm collecting...

Or better yet! A FLUFF ITEM KEY ...RING ...SLOT bag... Thing!

Yes!

Comment by jamesjiao

on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:56:44 -0600

The sad part is that, with the gear requirements for Dread Approach, you would think that, at the very least, people running it would have DBM installed. 90% of the people able to do these LFR's should have at least minimal raid experience in MoP, so why this is hard is beyond me. Now that it's been nerfed, I still don't expect it to solve everything.

It's not 'hard'. The problem is people don't listen and are unwilling to look up guides. It's also difficult to coordinate complete strangers. These are hurdles that many have leap cross. The difficulty lies with people, not the encounter.

Comment by Eralson

He wasn't broken. But nerfing him was easier than fixing the average member of a Raid Finder group.

Comment by Maelynn

on Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:34:14 -0600

Oh yes, I can't wait to stuff Orgrimmar with hotels and ask ridiculous amounts of money for all who end up in my city... *puts fingertips together* eeeeeexcellent...

Comment by temporal24

on Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:17:58 -0600

The hype behind Dungeon Challenge modes, as explained in blue posts months ago, was about getting through a difficult dungeon as fast as possible without any tricks like dodging pulls, invisibility, etc. Now, all we read is how we can shave off time in certain areas if we "know what to do." This isn't what they were supposed to be about. We shouldn't have to look up tricks to get through them at a fast pace: it should just be a grind like it was intended.